So I wanted to do something that might get more users to join and thought of this. I will try and keep up each week with a new game for the community to review. Hopefully this will gain the attention of those looking for reviews on games they are looking to play. Now I know there are a lot of other sites out there that people go to for this kind of thing but it can't hurt to try and it gives us a chance to express out own thoughts on the game. I am going to start with a game that most of us came back to the internets for.

If you have a suggestion on a game you would like to review or have reviewed please send me a PM and I will add it to the list.

Please include how many stars you gave to the game, explain why you gave the rating you did, and if you would like to break down the different aspects of the game, i.e. Game play, story, leveling mechanics, etc... please do so. Even if you have only explored a little part of the game give your thoughts on what you have seen so far. The only thing I ask is if you talk about the story, please use the spoiler tag:

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It's the little yellow and black circle.

If you don't agree with someones rating... Start a debate! But please keep it clean as we are a "family friendly" establishment.

I gave it a 4/5, though really I'm sitting on a 3.5. Since it's only recently released, I'll be nice! I've never done one of these though, so maybe my headings suck. D:

Game playIt works! There are minor glitches, but if you have a sense of humor, it's not too bad - sometimes, clicking a dialogue box clicks something behind it, so your character goes charging off to investigate something else. Leveling is mostly quest based, though if you 50% tax yourself/party a lot, your level will lag a little behind story. There is an achievement system (Kharas) of fun little goals that reward additional exp and zeny (except the merman/hermit crab kharas.. those are not fun >:( ).

CombatCombat is a little more irritating on melee characters (if something is right behind you, you don't turn around automatically. You have to manually turn around, back up until it's in front of you, or run a little ahead and then your character will turn around). If you try to use a skill from out of range, your character will likely run through the mob, then complain it can't attack something behind it. There is a bug where you can fail to use a skill and your client won't show it's on cooldown, but the server knows you are, so then you get engrish messages when you try to use your skill again. Bosses require some thought/movement, which can keep things interesting - highest threat level does not guarantee the boss will stay aggroed on the tank!

MechanicsThe biggest downside currently is probably the oversimplification compared to RO1. It's nice starting out since there's not as much to stress about, but pretty much everyone uses the same stats, and skill builds tend to be highly similar. Elements and races are in game, but everything does 100% damage. VIT/WIS only give minor HP/SP boosts, so people tend to put leftover points (1-8) in VIT and nothing in WIS, while balancing AGI (which affects crit rate) and STR or INT (physical or magical damage). Some classes are better off with equal atk/crit whereas others benefit from maxing one (5x) and leaving the other lower (2x). Cards currently only give stat bonuses, not skills, and right now it makes more sense to use 5 of the same card than going for a set bonus.

StoryFrom what I understand, most of the rawrlings are not actually following the story.. maybe I am the only one? ;_; There are actually tie-ins to RO1 and the original manwha. RO2 takes place 300 years after RO1, after some major changes have occurred.. much of the northern cities were obliterated due to the crazy cult followers in Rachel wrecking shit (who then survived to become the Freyjanity), including I believe Geffen. Because they weren't satisfied with almost destroying the world once, the Freyjanites kidnapped an assload of kids to experiment on further, but that was ruined by some badass Prontera knights coming in to save the day. Zeras Hyperion proceeded to adopt every single kid.. then dumped them in Elemento Academy. We are all these kids - which means he adopted and dumped like 40k children, wtf. D: This also means we're all 15 years old or so. This is hardly a spoiler as it is explained in like the first 5 minutes, but I dunno if anyone else picked up on it.

The RO2 story really is about exploring what the Freyjanites did to the world, and their ongoing nefarious goals. Many of the dungeons are around due to their work, and most of the main story quests are mopping up after them. Although not some great epic tale, I am enjoying the story. There's some funny bits, some heart-wrenching developments, and somewhat loveable characters. However, it's also very easy to just skip over everything - sure, you *could* read the quest text, but the quest log also has a concise goal (which can be clicked on to show map markers of where you need to go).

GraphicsI've seen a lot of complaints about the graphics.. they look like they're from 2006, too anime-y, etc etc. I guess if I were on high-end hardware, it'd bother me, but I appreciate that I can play the game on full texture settings on a cheap laptop. It's poorly optimized, so pretty much everyone would benefit from turning off lights/shadows/outfocusing, but otherwise it seems fine! Now that the temperature hiked, I will have to find some alternate cooling for my laptop since it seems to work hard to play RO2.. but.. as long as there's not hundreds of people on screen, it does fine. I like the cutesy style of thing, and it's fairly reminiscent of RO1. As with other things, there are some graphics glitches, but they are pretty much all individual occurrences - sometimes, a section of the map just fails to load. You can walk on it fine, but it looks like blue sky.

Bugs and glitchesSeveral skills have various quirks about them that will hopefully be fixed soonish. Right now corpses sometimes won't let you loot them, but the other loot bug (stuff stopped dropping) was fixed, so yay! Judging by the response to that, as long as something is not a major game-breaking bug, it won't be fixed until the next weekly maintenance (Tuesday), which isn't a deal-breaker to me. You sometimes can fall through the map and go flying through Rune-Midgard. If you hang out there, your character will eventually stretch out and look quite spooky. You might eventually die randomly (you hit an invisible something and took massive fall damage), or your client could crash and you'll end up on a random map. If you want to get out sooner, you can bwing back to spawn, or ask someone to invite you into a party and enter a dungeon (since there's a button to enter dungeons from anywhere).

The game hasn't been out here that long, and who knows if we're up to date on all of the fixes from SEA/KRO2. Keep a laid-back attitude and the glitches shouldn't be that bad to deal with!

EventsI feel the CMs have been trying really hard to keep events going. The open beta/stress test had several events, ranging from everyone gets it prizes to more involved requirements, though I've had to go through support to try to get some of my rewards. D: Launch had some similar events, and they've been giving out short-term costumes/mounts to everyone for certain facebook like milestones. Every week, several new events are announced. They've also expanded the prize limits on several events, which is nice! One launch event was supposed to be the first 100 to reach level 30 and post on facebook, but I'm pretty sure I was not within that limit (and didn't even bother posting when I got it, but several days later after there was a forum topic) and I still got a costume from it.

SupportThe CMs and GMs are great! They are active in forums and do watch in game for people asking for help in public channels when they fell through the maps. They are active with Facebook/Twitter and apparently do respond reasonably quickly to private messages. They also are trying to keep the population in the know about known bugs and patches.

However, my experience with the ticket support system has been awful. They're slow to respond and seem to look for keywords and cut-and-paste a generic reply. Also, you have to sign up for a separate support account to be able to respond to tickets, but you don't learn this until after 2 weeks passed and you received your response. I swear I signed up at one point, but then my account disappeared. I've tried opening a new ticket with my old ticket number, including the response I got, and gave the additional requested information.. just to have the same cut-and-paste response, AGAIN.

So, overall, it's a fun game that's doing well to pass the time. If I were playing all solo, I don't know how long I'd make it, but as long as the guild stays active, it should be fine! There are sorta-ro-style emotes, and even more awesome, now there are character actions you can do (like shrugging, or nodding, etc).. but.. best of all.. DANCES! The hilarity of some of the dances (class-specific) is about enough to bump this review from a 3.5 to a 4. :D

Ok so I meant to give it 3/5 stars instead of 4/5. I agree with a lot of what raela said however I am going off the available game now. Maybe a second review can come later after the major updates. Now I am not going to go as in depth as raela because she covered most of it and I agree with most of she said.

Game playIt is very linear from the start. Now I agree that this is better than the first Ragnarok Online as I don't have to go kill thousands of thousands of a mob to get a single level. The problem with it is that if you want to party up with someone you have to only do the quests while your counterparts are on or play catch up when someone goes ahead. Which this is hard for those that play a priest don't have a leveling partner like Zell and Rinny or Forge and Sei. Of course now I have raela's sorc to form team Taraela but before that I was giving up soloing as priest. I miss my heal bombing. The Khara system is a nice addition for gaining exp, zeny and stat adding titles like GTB Hunter or Sea Master. My favorite so far being Tomb Raider from Sacred Forest Temple because I feel like I am Lara Croft's equal. lol

CombatI fully agree with raela that this can be very irritating at times especially with melee and the running through the mob and having to turn around after the first hit. Now I don't understand why it works this way because when the mob changes its target and runs toward them you will follow. I would like to add that I don't like the targeting system. I know it was a lot of clicking in RO1 but I liked selecting my skill then clicking the target. I also liked how the cursor would snap. This is most irritating during Colosseum as everyone is constantly running around and it is hard to select someone.

MechanicsI also feel the same here. A good change to unsimplify it would be something like WIS would be the crit rate decider for magic based skills and VIT/WIS should give more HP/SP. However, I would rather have WIS be like DEX and shorten my cast time or maybe even cool down and have INT give SP like it did.

GraphicsI like the way the game looks however, with a few adjustments it could be better and still be simple enough to be played on lower end computers like laptops.

Bugs and GlitchesThe most infuriating glitch for me is when switching maps, entering/leaving dungeons as well as colosseum and using bwings causes you to to stay where you are and everyone around you disappears. You are unable to leave the game unless you use task manager. Now I understand this is only a problem with users of Windows 8 but I didn't have this problem until they fixed this for others in the 5/14 patch.

Update: Forgot to include that sprites will randomly start to run off in a direction even though the player isn't moving. This happens for me mostly in colosseum, which makes it really hard sometimes to attack people because the client thinks they are running off but then it fixes itself and then you run back the other way while during that time you didn't attack them...

I am enjoying the game and will continue to play as long as we can keep an active guild and get into WoE when they add it to the game. I also can't wait to do a raid and take out Bapho. Oh and yes randomly busting out into dance while raela go all out on the enemies is fun.

Thanks to both of you for posting such elaborate reviews, I agree with almost all of your points - I'll be writing a review of the game myself in the next 2-3 weeks for a publication and will drop a comment here when it's up.